Friday, December 11, 2009

Kid killed in busy school playground: Nobody charged

Police should have been able to take someone into custody same day

THE father of a teenager killed in a schoolyard brawl almost six months ago says it is "atrocious" no one has been charged. Steve Drummond, father of 15-year-old Jai Morcom, who died at Mullumbimby High School in northern NSW on August 29, slammed police yesterday after they issued a media release appealing for more witnesses. "It's pretty atrocious that this hasn't been sorted out by now," Mr Drummond told the Courier-Mail newspaper. "There were that many witnesses to it and there's no doubt there were a few (specific) kids involved."

Jai died after a playground fight over a lunch table. Students later staged a mass walkout and protest amid claims of a bullying problem at the school.

Mr Drummond has raised suggestions of "standover tactics" at Mullumbimby High, and NSW education officials have ordered a major review into student welfare at the school.

Tweed/Byron police crime manager Inspector Greg Carey appealed for patience, saying "every effort" was being made to solve the case. "We have conducted interviews with literally dozens of students, teachers and community members," he said. "We have been in constant contact with Jai's parents and the school community. "Investigators have also set up an email address which has been circulated throughout the school community, in the hope that additional information could be provided by that method."

Jai died from his injuries in the Gold Coast Hospital. Insp Carey said NSW police were still waiting the full autopsy report from Queensland authorities. "As Jai died in Queensland, the (NSW police) report will be submitted initially to the Queensland Coroner," Insp Carey said.

Corporate regulator takes 9 years to make its case -- and still bogged down

It's either gross incompetence or a witchhunt with no substance behind it. Or maybe it's both. But as long as you are churning through heaps of taxpayer money, why worry? Very unjust treatment of the accused, though, who is at this stage entitled to the presumption of innocence. Fortunately, the judge recognizes that. Are government lawyers the worst of all? If they were any good, would they be working for the government?

THE Australian Securities and Investments Commission has again come under sustained fire in the Victorian Supreme Court where a judge hearing the regulator's case against the former AWB boss, Andrew Lindberg, has accused ASIC's lawyers of ignoring his rulings.

One day after Justice Ross Robson permanently halted one of two civil penalty cases against Mr Lindberg, the judge reiterated that, in his view, ASIC's claim against Mr Lindberg was limited only to breaches of Mr Lindberg's fiduciary duties that occurred before Saddam Hussein was toppled from power in March 2003, and not after that date.

ASIC strongly disagrees with this interpretation as it believes Mr Lindberg's duties to AWB, including the duty to inform the board and to investigate allegations of corrupt behaviour by the wheat exporter, continued unbroken from early 2000, when he was appointed chief executive, to February 2006, when he quit.

ASIC's board is expected to meet next week to decide if the regulator will appeal against Justice Robson's decision of Wednesday, when he stopped ASIC from proceeding with its second civil penalty case.

Justice Robson also said that considering all the interruptions to ASIC's original case against Mr Lindberg, including the regulator launching its second case in November and now seeking appeals against his decisions, he was concerned about prejudice to Mr Lindberg. ''I think therefore that the primary consideration here must be that Mr Lindberg gets a fair trial,'' Justice Robson said. ''I think we are really reaching the outer limits of when a person gets a fair trial when it is some nine years after the events. I think we should do as much as possible to get the trial over and done with.''

ASIC's original case, filed in December 2007 and amended several times, alleges Mr Lindberg knew about $US225 million of kickbacks that the wheat exporter secretly paid to Saddam's regime in breach of United Nations sanctions, and that by failing to stop those payments he brought the company into disrepute.

In the second case, ASIC alleged Mr Lindberg misled the AWB board and took steps to prevent his fellow directors learning about either the kickbacks or other abnormal transactions.

ASIC's counsel, Norman O'Bryan, SC, told the judge yesterday that if ASIC appeals his decision to halt the second case, then the ''cut-off'' date imposed by Justice Robson will certainly be raised in the Court of Appeal.

Amid some tense exchanges, Justice Robson said he had limited ASIC's allegations of breaches to events before March 2003 because that was the way he had interpreted ASIC's amended statement of claim.

It was a chance for Tony Abbott to put to rest the perception, in the words of his host, that "you don't like women". But the Christmas lunch in Brisbane of the Women's Network Australia became so much more for Mr Abbott and 80 corporate cougars, who ganged up on him over his penchant for Speedos, laughed at his spruiking of their wares and then joined hands as newfound disciples of self-helper Amanda Gore, author of The Gospel of Joy.

It wasn't an orchestrated picture opportunity; Mr Abbott had planned for a catch-up lunch with former MP and recently exhumed candidate Teresa Gambaro, who was already booked to attend the event in a room overlooking Allan Border Oval. And like the great Australian cricket captain, Mr Abbott played defensively when needed -- promising to supply a picture for the group's website, but only in "my boardies" -- and moving on to the front foot about his problematic image among women.

Asked how he could be perceived in such a way when he lived with four women, Mr Abbott hit a proverbial six over the crowd of businesswomen. "Well, I know who the boss is and it's not me," he said, to cheers.

He then paid tribute to his supportive and independent wife and three daughters, before tackling the question of his alleged problem with women. "I think it is (a myth)," he said. "But in the end, I suppose, in politics you just got, to some extent, just roll with the punches. "Sometimes they are low blows, sometimes, they are not and you try and be yourself and you hope people will give you a fair go."

It should have been a segue to Ms Gore -- who near-eulogises on how to deal with competitors in the workplace -- but first, Mr Abbott was called to compere the product promotions of several WNA members.

Ms Gore talked of surrounding yourself with the right people and being a leader who is a "spirit igniter, and not a spirit foofer" of colleagues.

ANYONE SURVEYING the Australian immigration policy scene today must be seized with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Not only has the Student Visa racket emerged into the plain light of day, with its chains of corruption from beginning to end, but the threat to our borders from the illegals has re-erupted.

The Student Visa program, as noted earlier, stands out for its corrupt practices in an immigration program now grown notorious for corruption across its entirety (including not least its Refugee and Special Humanitarian Visa components). So long as we blindly continue to fail to acknowledge that Australian citizenship (the real goal of almost all involved, both genuine students and bogus “students” alike) is a highly valuable property right—for which people from countries such as China and India will pay whatever bribes are necessary—it will remain so.

As to the re-emergence of the people-smugglers and their human cargoes, put aside, first, the lying (regrettably, there is no longer any other word for it) assertions by the Rudd government that the recent upsurge of illegals arriving on our shores owes its origins solely to “push” factors—in particular, the conflict in Afghanistan and the defeat of the Tamil Tiger insurgents in Sri Lanka. No more people are squatting in UNHCR camps around the world today than there were when the Howard government shut down the earlier people-smugglers’ trade in boat people.

At any given time, people-smugglers and their criminal clients have a choice of destinations—continental Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States (usually via Mexico), Canada, Australia and so on. The choice they make will be a function of the relative expense (that is, the fee charged by the smuggler), the relative value to the client if successful (very high in the case of Australia), and the relative likelihood of such success. Under the Howard regime, that last factor had become so small, and subject to such relative hardship even if successful, that the choice was strongly weighted in favour of attempting to go somewhere other than Australia.

The tearing down by the Rudd government of the barriers erected by its predecessor has changed all that, and no amount of lying denials of that fact will alter it.

At the time of writing, a new element has entered the equation. Having boasted of abolishing “the Pacific solution”, the Rudd government has now been forced to go, cap (plus millions of dollars) in hand to the government of Indonesia. On bended knees, it has been begging that country to “warehouse” two boatloads of illegals—most of them, seemingly, from Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, the criminals involved have resorted—with the eager co-operation of the Australian media—to one threat after another: first, to blow up, or set fire to, one of the boats in question; second, to embark on several hunger strikes—rapidly abandoned when that tactic failed to work; third, refusal to disembark from either vessel without various “guarantees”; and so on.

Not only is this whole bizarre incident leading to Australia being seen as a laughing stock around the world—with both the illegals and the Indonesian authorities playing our government for suckers—but also, even if eventually resolved (temporarily) in our favour, there can be no lasting assurance in such arrangements. To quote again from that above-mentioned Quadrant article three years ago, “we would be wise to avoid becoming too reliant on Indonesia’s goodwill and co-operation. As the record has consistently shown, those attitudes can change overnight.”

Meanwhile, the so-called processing facilities at Christmas Island have become rapidly over-crowded. (I say “so-called” because there is no way that people who arrive there without identity papers can be properly processed as to their criminal—or even terrorist—records, or general character. Nor, as a matter of fact, can they be properly checked for various transmissible diseases, given the facilities available on the island.) The government has been frantically trying to minimise this problem, principally by “clearing” the criminals involved and granting them Permanent Residence visas. So frantic has this process been that even the illegals—one or more of whom is known to have deliberately set fire to the boat off Darwin on which, as a result, five people perished—were also recently granted permanent residence and released into the West Australian community.

If the government’s performance on all this has been abysmal, the Opposition’s has been little better. Not until a former Minister for Immigration, Philip Ruddock, spoke to the Australian (and then gave a succession of excellent, hard-hitting interviews to both radio and television), had we heard so much as a cheep out of the Opposition. Its formal spokeswoman on immigration matters, Sharman Stone (no relation, I am glad to say) had effectively said nothing. The best that the Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, could do was call for an inquiry! Why he would need an inquiry into these matters when he has within his own party room two of the most knowledgeable people in Australia—Philip Ruddock and Kevin Andrews, both of whom he has small-mindedly relegated to his backbench—beggars imagination.

In a larger sense, of course, we do need an inquiry, and a thoroughgoing one at that, into the whole corrupt immigration scene—one leading to an immediate major reform and reshaping of the Department of Immigration. The Howard government failed to take up that suggestion, and the present government will certainly not do so.

The bottom line is this. It is the first duty of any government to protect its citizens, including their protection against invasion by undesirables and incompatibles who seek to penetrate the nation’s borders by entering into criminal conspiracies with people-smugglers. The Rudd government’s palpable failure in this respect means that we have lost control of our borders. Just as the British government under Tony Blair (whom Kevin Rudd more and more closely resembles) lost control of immigration into Britain—with results that are now producing a sharp rise in the fortunes of Britain’s only truly fascist political party, the British National Party—so we are losing control of immigration into Australia. Though the consequences may be literally incalculable, one thing is certain: Australia will be a lesser country—and progressively so—as a consequence.

1 comment:

rloader
said...

That is a very comprehensive reading of this situation and I hope that the present Shadow Immigration Minister, Mr. Kevin Andrews will be able to get this across in our hugely biased left wing newspapers. I can't wait for Parliament to resume. There should be firecrackers going off everywhere and maybe a few hits on this reprehensible Federal Government.

Background

Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.

Most academics are lockstep Leftists so readers do sometimes doubt that I have the qualifications mentioned above. Photocopies of my academic and military certificates are however all viewable here

For overseas readers: The "ALP" is the Australian Labor Party -- Australia's major Leftist party. The "Liberal" party is Australia's major conservative political party.

In most Australian States there are two conservative political parties, the city-based Liberal party and the rural-based National party. But in Queensland those two parties are amalgamated as the LNP.

Again for overseas readers: Like the USA, Germany and India, Australia has State governments as well as the Federal government. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).

For American readers: A "pensioner" is a retired person living on Social Security

"Digger" is an honorific term for an Australian soldier

Another lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

Another bit of Australian: Any bad writing or messy anything was once often described as being "like a pakapoo ticket". In origin this phrase refers to a ticket written with Chinese characters - and thus inscrutably confusing to Western eyes. These tickets were part of a Chinese gambling game called "pakapoo".

Two of my ancestors were convicts so my family has been in Australia for a long time. As well as that, all four of my grandparents were born in the State where I was born and still live: Queensland. And I am even a member of the world's second-most condemned minority: WASPs (the most condemned is of course the Jews -- which may be why I tend to like Jews). So I think I am as Australian as you can get. I certainly feel that way. I like all things that are iconically Australian: meat pies, Vegemite, Henry Lawson etc. I particularly pride myself on my familiarity with the great Australian slanguage. I draw the line at Iced Vo-Vos and betting on the neddies, however. So if I cannot comment insightfully on Australian affairs, who could?

My son Joe

On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!

I am an army man. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies or mining companies

Although I have been an atheist for all my adult life, I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak.

The Rt. Rev. Phil Case (Moderator of the Presbyterian church in Queensland) is a Pharisee, a hypocrite, an abomination and a "whited sepulchre".

English-born Australian novellist, Patrick White was a great favourite in literary circles. He even won a Nobel prize. But I and many others I have spoken to find his novels very turgid and boring. Despite my interest in history, I could only get through about a third of his historical novel Voss before I gave up. So why has he been so popular in literary circles? Easy. He was a miserable old Leftist coot, and, incidentally, a homosexual. And literary people are mostly Leftists with similar levels of anger and alienation from mainstream society. They enjoy his jaundiced outlook, his dissatisfaction, rage and anger.

Would you believe that there once was a politician whose nickname was "Honest"? "Honest" Frank Nicklin M.M. was a war hero, a banana farmer and later the conservative Premier of my home State of Queensland in the '60s. He was even popular with the bureaucracy and gave the State a remarkably tranquil 10 years during his time in office. Sad that there are so few like him.

Revered Labour Party leader Gough Whitlam was a very erudite man so he cannot have been unaware of the similarities of his famous phrase “the Party, the platform, the people” with an earlier slogan: "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer". It's basically the same slogan in reverse order.

Australia's original inhabitants were a race of pygmies, some of whom survived into modern times in the mountainous regions of the Atherton tableland in far North Queensland. See also here. Below is a picture of one of them taken in 2007, when she was 105 years old and 3'7" tall

Julia Gillard, a failed feminist flop. She was given the job of Prime Minister of Australia but her feminist preaching was so unpopular that she was booted out of the job by her own Leftist party. Her signature "achievements" were the carbon tax and the mining tax, both of which were repealed by the next government.

The "White Australia Policy: "The Immigration Restriction Act was not about white supremacy, racism, or the belief that whites were higher up the evolutionary tree than the coloured races. Rather, it was designed to STOP the racist exploitation of non-whites (all of whom would have been illiterate peasants practicing religions and cultures anathema to progressive democracy) being conscripted into a life of semi-slavery in a coolie-worked plantation economy for the benefit of the absolute monarchs, hereditary aristocracy and the super-wealthy companies and share-holders of the northern hemisphere.

A great little kid

In November 2007, a four-year-old boy was found playing in a croc-infested Territory creek after sneaking off pig hunting alone with four dogs and a puppy. The toddler was found five-and-a-half hours after he set off from his parents' house playing in a creek with the puppy. Amazingly, Daniel Woditj also swam two creeks known to be inhabited by crocs during his adventurous romp. Mr Knight said that after walking for several kilometres, Daniel came to a creek and swam across it. Four of his dogs "bailed up" at the creek but the youngster continued on undaunted with his puppy to a second creek. Mr Knight said Daniel swam the second croc-infested creek and walked on for several more kilometres. "Captain is a hard bushman and Daniel is following in his footsteps. They breed them tough out bush."

A great Australian: His eminence George Pell. Pictured in devout company before his elevation to Rome

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here